What MLP meant and means to me

Every once and awhile, I enjoy looking back on the stories I've written about these characters. Partially because I forget the details and sometimes my past self surprises me, but mostly because whenever I do, I get a glimpse of who I was when I wrote them.

My first exposure to MLP was actually in 2012, some time after the airing of the Season 2 premiere. But funnily enough, that was all I ever saw of it until the final episodes of Season 5 were airing in the Fall of 2015. Why I didn't fall in love with it in 2012 is a mystery to me. But in 2015, I was a freshly graduated college student working full time and trying to adjust to the post-college life, and not doing so great about it. In retrospect, I believe that time marked the beginning of what was going to be a depression that lasted a couple years or so.

Enter My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The cartoon that by all means shouldn't have made such a difference, but absolutely did. It all started with a simple curiosity, of course, which for me was looking up full episodes on Youtube. I don't recall which ones I saw first, but they were probably uploads from early Season 5. I went in feeling weird about myself, hulled up in my room in an apartment I shared with someone watching a cartoon for little girls while wearing headphones. But one episode became two, two episodes became four, and after I'd watched several in a row, I realized that wow...this show was made for me.

I've always liked things that are "cutesy", for lack of a better word. I loved Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, growing up. I even went through an odd phase in high school where I obsessively watched The Lion King, for some reason. There was just something about the characters, the animation, the creativity, that drew me toward it. I liken my initial interests to MLP to that experience, but multiplied by an order of magnitude. It's like it took that indescribable feeling and made it the core feeling of the entire show. It's hard to say if I liked it so much because I am a naturally optimistic person, or if the show molded me to become that kind of person as I continued to be involved with it. It doesn't matter, I suppose, because it's who I am now.

So what does this show mean to me? This cartoon, somehow, exemplifies my stance on how we ought to go about living life. To a reasonable extent, of course. But the core of what the show to me is this:

Un-apologetically optimistic in the face of a pessimistic reality, but realistic and in its approach toward solving the tough problems.

That's probably reading way into it, but hey, it's what I get out of it. On a philosophical level, at least. The point is that it says "You know, the world is messed up. But instead of reiterating that fact, let's have an optimistic, hopeful outlook, because what's the harm in making that the default stance? Anything else is a self-fulfilling prophesy." Okay...the show doesn't say that. I do. But that's the philosophy that eventually dragged me out of being depressed, and I attribute some of that to the show. As a side note, another show that has that feeling is Star Trek: The Next Generation. I watched that after getting into MLP and found that it has a similar sense of optimism about the world and humanity.

So I was going to write more about why I write as well, but it's apparent I've gotten way ahead of myself. Overall, I'm making this blog post because I feel like I should write down something that isn't just a piece of fiction, so that when I find myself looking back at this "time capsule" of sorts that I've created for myself, I can read something real about my life too. Compared to when I first started watching this show, my life is in much better shape. I've made new friends, found work that feels more fulfilling to me, and grown a lot as a person (and a writer). So while this blog post is mostly just for me to get my thoughts out, I hope anybody reading this finds something to resonate with as well.

Comments

[PonyThunder]

5015035
Inspiration can come from anywhere, so it is what it is. Like you said, it's about the characters and the stories, not just the surface appearance of the thing. The characters are very easy to relate to and being involved with anything for years and years will make it grow on you. We're shaped by the environment we put ourselves in.

Thanks for your comment